Gordon Stein, CFO of CleanTech Lithium, explains why CTL acquired the 23 Laguna Verde licenses. Watch the video here.
Sums up the state of AIM at present that TRX are trading at the same valuation as 3 years ago, despite clearly executing on all fronts and not returning to the market for capital. If this can break 70p tomorrow then it could rerate quite significantly IMO. Pre Woodford / Invesco dump & subsequent funding issues (which likely wouldn't have happened if Woodford hadn't gone to the wall) this was a £100m+ market cap which was a long way from profitability!
Nobody has responded to the point I raised on Friday; why did CVSG's EBITDA margins increase from ~17% in 2014-2019 to ~21.5% in the 3 years since Covid? They've made around £20m PA more in the last 3 years than they would have done if their pre Covid margins has remained the same...
If I'd looked at the financials here and seen flat EBITDA margins then I'd have been bullish, however it looks to me like they have indeed been benefitting from fattened margins which will have been coming out of the pocket of their customers.
I think the market is pricing in a return to pre Covid EBITDA margins, which would mean a sizable reduction in forecast EBITDA. This also won't be helped by the large net debt balance they have built up via their expensive / aggressive entry into the Aus market.
And again, market makers aren't influencing this in the slightest given the £4.4m volume so far today - this is a bulls v bears battle on the order book.
Baffles me who the little sellers are here day after day, are the market makers exchanging shares at bid to try to scare the naive into selling? There absolutely seems to be a 'retain control of the price at all costs' mentality, likely to keep it under the radar. News can't be too far away now...
Next week will certainly be interesting. Can they really risk maintaining the status quo with interest income given the current EV of just £500m? Guidance will be critical with the main market listing, IMO it's extremely confusing to report £115m in PBT and then tell the market that £70m of this should effectively be ignored...
I've thought about this a lot over the past few weeks and even got to the point where I have considered that maybe there is an underlying reason for their extreme prudence?
Something I've not properly understood is this; we know they earn their interest income from nightly sweeping of client cash balances into a lump sum. But why aren't clients bothered about not earning interest on their cash? Is Alpha effectively pocketing all client interest?
If this is the case then it could potentially explain why they missed their 2023 ABS bank account target by 50%...
Note that Wise returns a portion of it's interest income to customers, which potentially explains why they feel comfortable recognising the net interest income in their forecasts / expectations ... Also note that Wise has added another £1b to their market cap since Alpha started their buyback!
Of course, if Alpha had earnings calls or any investor interaction like a CMD, then things would surely be clearer, as these questions would have almost certainly been asked & answered.
And @ Magoo, I guess the key question is whether the auction would be happening if PAT hadn't submitted the NOA? It seems very coincidental to auction it only weeks after the threat from PAT become official...
@Gallmat, I totally agree. And from 6.5p the upside is comfortably more than 10x in my opinion. AIM is so unpopular right now that I genuinely don't think anyone is looking for opportunities like PAT, assuming they simply don't exist. If I hadn't been well aware of LIT then I very much doubt I'd have bought in, certainly not with conviction. And the flipside is that LIT didn't even RNS their investment here, so unless you know PAT are listed then you aren't going to buy in either!
Like you, the reasons given by India for not granting the license seemed very basic, i.e. this article
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/jaipur/rise-in-gold-prices-drawing-firms-interest-in-raj-mines/articleshow/80064983.cms
For LIT to do their DD and provide $13.6m in non recourse funding means we can be almost certain that the 'discrepancies in the name of the company' cited as apparent justification for not granting a permit for a mine valued at ~$1b, are utter nonsense.
The fact that the market cap is lower than the day the LIT funding was confirmed is also utter nonsese!
They can't simply bid their own shares up, as per the FCA rules, so they've taken when they can this week & that's fine by me. There has been a large buyer taking shares off a large seller most of the week, if that buyer wasn't taking 150-500k chunks (see delayed trades from Thursday, published midday yesterday) then FCH would have very likely bought back a lot more. Given the volume, I wouldn't be surprised to see some TR1's in the next few weeks.
Next week will be really interesting. You have to wonder where the share price would be if they hadn't been buying back as the selling pressure is near constant. I see Wise has risen further to £9.22, no doubt due to rates being higher for longer than expected - still hard to believe Alpha are happy to leave themselves so exposed to a low ball offer...
Nobody was taking their bids today at 48.5p so they has to up their buy price to 49p to get their fill. Excellent week with a rise of 13%, and with a mere 1.4% of the buyback completed - ~732k shares for £350k
CVSG isn't a market maker stock, it's on SETS. Looked back at the adjusted EBITDA margins from 2014 to present on the their vetinary segment, pre 2020 they averaged ~17%, post 2020 they've averaged ~21.5%. What has changed to justify a 25% uplift? Notable that the warned on EBITDA margins back in 2017/18 (which caused shares to crater from £15 to £3.60 over 18 months), this current stage 2 fall is similar to the pattern back then.
Could be, I suspect the 4 largest shareholders who have held since IPO were instrumental in initiating the share buyback as they wouldn't want a low ball offer coming in when shares were at their lows. The buyback also serves to increase their ownership stakes, which would be further supplemented if they are adding shares as well...
Again it's worth noting that there are at least two order book buyers here - FCH are placing bids on the book which are being filled by the seller, to the tune of 241k today. However there are other significant buyers taking blocks of 100k.
Once sellers are exhausted then the only way is up, and having additional large buyers is extremely helpful. Very interesting to watch it play out.
One key piece of information seems to be missing from the US expansion RNS; if the partner is going to cover all marketing costs, what do they get in return? Surely there has to be either an equity share or commission element?
I suspect T Rowe are the sellers, as they had been reducing their exposure to the UK for quite some time now. To get the best out of this investment I think you've got to take a 6-12 month view - i.e. give them time to buy the shares back and let the price squeeze higher. They have authority to buy back up to ~36m shares before the AGM in mid May, so it will be interesting to see how many they actually take out of circulation before then. The main takeaway is high volume = a good thing.
I think what's more notable today is the buying volume excluding the buyback, there is clearly a big buyer in the market hoovering up more shares than the company can...
Closing auction again interesting. A seller showed their hand early doors with 200k on the ask, this was matched pretty quickly with a 200k buy order at 50p, buys vs sells was about 2v1, with some 400k of buys left on the book at uncrossing. Again, it's easy to be bullish here just due to the fact that they could buy back 53m shares at these levels and the top 4 holders of >16m shares have held since the IPO at £4... Look forward to seeing how many they have bought back when the RNS lands later.
Indeed. Shares were trading at 70p in Feb 2023 during what was a far more uncertain economic environment, without any flexipay growth, without the genuine prospect of profitability post US exit & without a £25m buyback. It's just far too cheap down here.
@gallmat, it's just a bureaucratic nightmare, where nepotism appears to be the preferred currency
Not sure if you've read this 2007 times of india article before but it gives a good idea of the optimism there was back the re. Bhukia / Indo Gold;
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/indo-golds-finding-to-lure-foreign-firms/articleshow/1653943.cms
It discloses some important information re. a point you were asking about a couple of days ago;
"The site of the discovery is in an uninhabited area, requiring no relocation"
Brilliant late RNS - 237k shares bought back today, make sure you scroll down for the itemized buys. What's notable is that they were bidding shares up this morning paying 47.75p and then taking the bids off the order book this afternoon at 46.6p, as well as the 50k buy at 47.5p. Makes sense if you want to buy as many as possible at current levels.
Have spent a decent amount of time looking at the accounts this morning and my conclusion is this isn't anywhere close to being cheap. Adjusted EBITDA / EBITDA & 'underlying EPS' are completely irrelevant when amortising large acquisition costs and they still have >£300m to put through the P&L.
Basic EPS in the interims was 20.4p, annualised that puts the current PE at >25x. And they have material debt to boot.
This has been an incredible journey for early investors who have held for 10+ years, back in 2012 it traded at just over £1 a share, but until the outcome of the CMA saga becomes clear it's unattractive IMO, especially with the aforementioned debt.